VB5 - Choppy audio

[mpack]

Bumping this topic is rather pointless. If others do not have the problem then bumping will not cause them to have it. All you can do is raise (or add to) a BugTracker ticket and await developments.

[loukingjr]

Not to quibble Don but I wouldn't say the four others in this topic that are having the same problem, including myself is "others do not have the problem".

[loukingjr]

FWIW, audio seems better with a Ubuntu 15.10 host and 3D acceleration turned off for a Windows guest. Except for the start up sound. I assume that's because it's busy loading. As far as Windows 10, it seems to load and run faster with 3D disabled.

[Big_Mac]

I agree... it is still not fixed... I am now on 5.0.8 and still with the Windows 10 guest.. the sound is problematic....

I wonder why the Virtualbox community does not have a standard audio driver for windows guest machines... (one that Microsoft would sign off on)...

In any event... hope the audio is fixed soon..

[maara]

Yesterday I tried to connect my usb headset I am using for the voip and attached it to the vbox guest instead of to the host.
For the usb device, I had absolutely no audio issues when the sound was routed to the usb device directly from the guest system while the audio going to the host system was still having issues.
I am suspecting that this has really something to do with the audio processing on the host side more than a driver issue on the guest system...
The other issue is that the usb sound card sometimes causes the guest to freeze........

[mpack]

Not to quibble Don but I wouldn't say the four others in this topic that are having the same problem, including myself is "others do not have the problem".

Well, I like a nice quibble, however I don't see where I said that others do not have the problem. I said that bumping the topic doesn't change the numbers.

[loukingjr]

I agree, the bump was pointless.

[Big_Mac]

The problem with windows Guest systems is still present in 5.0.8 ... Windows 10 really brings out the problem....

Hope to see a solution soon

Thanks

Andy

[Shurup]

Just created an account to give you guys some insights.

I've noticed the audio becomes choppy when I throttled the CPU speed (execution cap) for the guest OS (XP and later Win 10 in my case).
Give your guest OS a full 100%, just one CPU is often enough, but it has to be a 100%. Both the guest and host OSs are much snappier then, throttling the CPU speed does more bad than good for both OSs.

If it's matters, my host OS is Linux Mint, but I store the Windows XP virtual machine on NTFS partition so it's also available to my other dual boot OS - Windows 7, which had the same symptoms with choppy and poor quality audio running guest win xp.

Hope it helps. Cheers

[Big_Mac]

I do not throttle my guest machines... I do not have the audio problems with Linux... just Windows... I suspect it is the guest driver....

For Linux I use the ICH AC97 guest sound controller and the Host Driver - Windows DirectSound.... (works fine)
For Windows I have to use the Intel HD Audio sound controller... (it is the only thing which is recognized by windows) (Choppy - eventually freezes the guest system)


Andy

[loukingjr]

FWIW, the audio issue only seems to occur with Linux hosts and Windows guests. I changed the paravirtualization setting for my Windows 10 guest to None and my audio issue went away. Host: Ubuntu 15.10.

[maara]

I have created Ticket #14798
I'd like to ask those having the same issue to comment on the ticket as well...

thanks!

[loukingjr]

Did you try changing the paravirtualization interface setting to None?

[maara]

I believe I tried that at the beginning.
Currently I am running on default.
Let me try once again....

EDIT: don't want to make a quick judgement but seems far far better!

EDIT2: sorry - not better at all...

[Shurup]

Linux Host and Windows host made no difference for my guest win xp. While digging for why the sound became choppy, I tried every setting in virtual box and none helped. On another forum I read that disabling hyperthreding in BIOS helped others but my laptop doesn't have this BIOS option (it's AMD Turion 2 M600 Mobile CPU in my system).
What did make a difference and make the sound tolerable is using a Soundblaster 16 in virtualbox settings for guest OS. I had to go through add new hardware and pointing it to a default Soundblaster 16 and AWE32 windows driver, which installed a sound card that wasn't even being detected by windows. So I almost settled for that, but for me removing the CPU Execution Cap in virtualbox settings made sound normal again.